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It’s a Bird, a Plane, Evel Knievel; Wait, It’s Only Eddie ‘the Eagle’

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Remember Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, Britain’s gutsy ski jumper from the 1988 Winter Olympic Games? Well, he is in training for the 1998 Olympics.

But he doesn’t limit himself to ski jumping. “I am also a stuntman,” he said. “I do jumps off buildings, car stunts and skiing stunts. I hold the world record for ski jumping over cars [10], buses [7] and people [35].”

Is there any way to check this out?

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Trivia time: Who scored the first touchdown in the first Super Bowl at the Coliseum in 1967?

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Community loyalty: The east Texas community of Pittsburg is changing its name for a week in support of the Dallas Cowboys, who play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

The official name change--to Cowboys, Texas--will come at a ceremony today. Pittsburg, with a population of 3,635, is 108 miles east of Dallas.

The idea isn’t entirely original. The town of Buffalo, Texas, changed its name to Blue Star when the Cowboys played the Buffalo Bills in the 1993 and 1994 Super Bowls.

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USA Fats? In an interview with Roy McHugh of the Pittsburgh Press in 1965, Minnesota Fats, who died Thursday, said:

“I’m every kind of Fats. In Norfolk during the war, they called me Virginia Fats. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I’d be Pittsburgh Fats. Now I’m Minnesota Fats. I’ve got that on my social security card. I sent in my real name, Rudolph Wanderone, and they didn’t use it.”

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Lube job: Dan Kelly in USA Today talking about his brother, Buffalo Bill quarterback Jim Kelly, who had shoulder surgery Friday:

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“For an NFL quarterback, it would be the equivalent of a 5,000-pass tuneup, or maybe a 200-slam tuneup.”

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Who needs it: John Daly told Golf Digest he wasn’t much of a student in college:

“History wasn’t bad,” he said. “But world literature and all that? . . . I [couldn’t] care less about what happened, all those fiction stories about what happened in the year 1500 or 1600. Half of ‘em aren’t even true.”

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Warning: Gordon Edes of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel after spending an evening at the alley with Florida Marlin pitcher John Burkett, an accomplished bowler: “Never bowl with a guy who shows up with a ball called a Piranha.”

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FYI: Allen Doyle, 47, will be the oldest PGA Tour rookie ever to play in the Nissan (Los Angeles) Open next month at Riviera Country Club.

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Looking back: On this day in 1973, George Foreman knocked out Joe Frazier in two rounds to win the world heavyweight championship.

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Trivia answer: Green Bay’s Max McGee, on a 37-yard pass from Bart Starr against the Kansas City Chiefs.

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Quotebook: Green Bay Packer General Manager Ron Wolf on beating San Francisco and losing to Dallas in the NFL playoffs: “One week you feel euphoric, the next you feel like a piece of slime on the bottom of the ocean.”

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